


A Daughter Born, A Daughter Raised

by orphan_account



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Gotham (TV)
Genre: Babs Considers, Butterfly Effect, Domino Effect, F/M, Flash Forward, Gotham Continuity, Inner Dialogue, Mary Lloyd and John Grayson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:41:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24804088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Barbara Gordon considers the circumstances of her birth, and who could be credited with creating those circumstances.
Relationships: Barbara Gordon/Dick Grayson
Kudos: 18





	A Daughter Born, A Daughter Raised

**Author's Note:**

> I have not read this since I word vomited it at 5 am. I also did not have anyone else read it. I am tired. :)

Sometimes I put all my knowledge together, as if I’m putting it into a basket. A basket full of the textbook things, and the stories my mother rocked me to sleep to, and the knowledge I hear in the whispering darkness of Gotham. A basket of the circumstances of Gotham.

I like to think that my basket is a little more honest than the baskets others may find themselves holding. Gotham is my blood. My birthright. I was not simply born in this city - my entire being is made of it.

But when I do this thing - putting all of that history in one stream of thought - I begin to ponder many things. I know why I live here. I know why I chose this life, and my lies, and my truths. I have no greater purpose than the one I serve within this island. But why does anyone else stay?

Even say you forget the chaos that wrecks Gotham monthly, weekly, daily. The robbings of Catwoman, the underworld Penguin so desperately grips, the puzzles made of our very home from the Riddler. Say none of that is happening. Why does anyone choose this home, after everything it has seen?

I’m thinking about a circus that comes through, every single cold season.

I couldn’t tell you the month they roll around, and they’ve changed the name a couple of times. The acts they keep the same, if the act is still alive.

That sentence really keeps you from considering running off to any circuses you may find, huh?

The circus still comes to Gotham. Fills every seat the first few nights, then of course the numbers dwindle. Kids and parents, teen dates, senior citizens all go to see the spectacle. I went once, with my dad.

Only once, even though the kids at school boasted about going again and again. I didn’t even ask my mom to take me when I stayed with her. I went once, and it was enough.

I didn’t know back then, as a child - maybe only five or six - the tragic trail that circus left in our city. I was happily unaware to those dark whispers while I watched animals and magic, dancers and flyers. I couldn’t get some ten-year-old gymnast out of my head for weeks.

That circus still travels, and it only stays in Gotham for a month at a time. Maybe less. And yet to our small island it brings its outcasts. Leaves them here, washed ashore, expecting this city to protect them. Make them loved children of the dark island. Nowadays, I think it only ever loved one despite past appearances.

The circus is in town right now, and while Dick drives us around Gotham, I wonder what child it may bring to us this year. Perhaps none - it seems to like ten year gaps - but maybe it’s been long enough. Or maybe this city will finally burn that big top to the ground for the last time.

I glance at the man next to me and feel a small, sad smile grace my lips. No. He wouldn’t let that happen, no matter what he may say. We all know that.

But Dick isn’t the only lost kid found roaming after devastation hit the tents. He is only the best of them.

There’s the one who created his trauma and loss; there’s the one who engineered it. 

The Valeskas and their families chose Gotham - Gotham chose Richard Grayson.

In my basket, I know Dick’s story from the whispers he lets go off during the darkest parts of the night, when it’s only us and the silence in between his words. The Valeskas can be found in the true crime part of dusty Gotham bookstores. And in Bruce’s mind, I assume.

He doesn’t bring it up much.

Gotham is my blood and my body - my parents owned this city in their own ways before I was born. They still do, even now, even in different ways. But when I put it altogether, a part of me speculates that my birth was decided perhaps very far from Gotham.

Wherever Jeremiah Valeska was when he decided it was time to run to Gotham’s shores and ask for mercy and refuge. I can practically feel the dominos tipping, leading to a catastrophic year of Gotham left in rubble. The circumstances of Gotham that became my birth.

Dad doesn’t discuss the Valeskas, end of discussion. Mom will, but I know she’s always sugarcoated the stories. Selfishly, maybe, but I suspect she really just doesn’t think the details matter anymore. Barbara Kean believes in the power of choices, not the power of the past.

I almost bought a ticket or two to the circus, when I first saw the flyers and the newspaper ads. I thought I could ask someone to go with me. Not Dick - that would be cruel. Dad wouldn’t, and probably try to hide my own ticket from me. Bruce doesn’t take nights off. I could find an excuse for anyone, but I know it’s because they don’t want to see the birthplace of such terror and hardship. 

But there’s a part of me that sees my birth there, too. Gotham the blood, the body, the mind, but the circus, perhaps. . . the will, the way, the need to be good. Honest. The circus represents a world I will never fully understand, but always want to see stopped. The malevolent forces that attack my city endlessly.

“You’re thinking too loud, Babs.”

I glance back to Dick. His eyes are still on the road, but I guess he’s noticed something that’s off.  _ I guess it is his job _ .

Honesty.

“I’m thinking about the circus.”

Dick tenses, but he snorts to cover. “Any in particular, or just considering the thought?”

I tap my fingers against my thigh. “The circus. Your circus.”

“If it was my circus, it would be floating in the river after I ripped the big top in half.”

I go silent. 

“It’s alright, Babs. I know you weren’t just idolizing the place or anything. Talk to me.”

“I think in a weird way, that circus is the reason I’m here,” I say, and it just sounds  _ the most  _ stupid coming out of my mouth, condensed like that. 

“In my car. Because, I mean, I guess, yeah-”

“No. I mean alive at all.”

Now Dick goes silent. But he recovers before I have to fill the gap.

“The butterfly effect? Something like that? Because it’s not like the tent and the cotton candy stand got it on and produced Barbara Gordon.”

I smile. “Something like that.”

We both go back to silence. Dick hums along to whatever is on the radio. I tap my fingers.

After a while, “I guess it works out,” comes from the other side of the car.

I jolt a little, having been back lost in my own head. “What does?”

I can see Dick smiling. “You know what my mother told me once, and my circumstance I just happened to latch onto?”

“Don’t keep me in suspense. What did Mary have to share?”

“A lot of the circus had partied together that night. She was tucking me in, and she was still a little tipsy. I asked her who Lila was - it was a name they were throwing around that night.”

“Valeska,” I fill in.

“Of course. And she sighed, and looked at me, and told me that sometimes she thought Lila was the whole reason I existed. But then my dad walked in, and he seemed really pissed that she said that. My parents had a lot of cat fights, but he looked so honestly angry that I was caught off guard.”

“Right,” I say, to give him a second. His grip on the wheel is just a little tighter. He’s five miles over where he should be. I don’t say anything about it, and I’m glad I don’t because he starts to ease up just a second later.

“But he didn’t fight over it. Instead, he just looked at her and said, ‘That woman is not the reason we’re together.’ And I remember him looking at me, and almost grimacing, and going, ‘We’ve got that cop to thank for that, I like to think.’”

“Grimace? Doesn’t seem like he liked that thought at all.”

Dick laughs. “No, I don’t think he did. But maybe he respected ‘that cop’ enough to think he should.” He’s smiling again. “My mom never gave me a name, but from what I’ve put together, I think he meant your dad, Barbara.”

“How come?” Tap. Tap. Tap tap.

“Some dates I’ve been able to put together. I was born about nine months after Jerome Valeska’s arrest. Nine months after the circus - it was Haly’s at the time - was in Gotham and my parents eloped. You dad worked that case.”

“I know.”

We let it sit.

“Why does it fit?” I ask.

“If you get to think you were born from that circus, then I’m going to think that I was born from your dad.”  _ Dick _ grimaces, and I wonder how much he looks like his dad right now. “That sounds weird.”

“In your basket, I think it makes sense nonetheless.”

“In my- what?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

He hums.

I stop tapping my fingers.

I’m Gotham’s daughter, and Dick Gotham’s son, in his own way. Maybe more so than I had considered before. Maybe there’s a duality within both of us - the chaos of that circus, the vigilance of Gotham. Born of a Valeska-related crisis - the brothers born of a taste for havoc. Dominoes, falling in a row.

Bruce, when he did speak of Jeremiah Valeska, and not the Joker, did say something to the same tune. A part of Bruce may have been born from the crimes of one of Gotham’s forsaken refugees, even if more metaphorical than Dick’s and my own conceptions. Gotham chose us all, in its own tragic ways - chosen to love the bat family, chosen to punish the Valeskas. 

In my mind, I close the basket I’d been mentally rifling through. I put it back in a corner. I cannot leave its contents behind, but I can deconstruct the timelines and the causations. I can choose to not beat the dead horse of the circumstances of my existence.

Now that I’ve stopped talking, Dick offers me his hand. I grab it, locking my fingers through the spaces of his own. I lean my head against the car window, and close my eyes, hoping my nap won’t be filled with red tents and clown noses.

I hear Dick mumble something before I’m completely out. “What?” I ask.

“Do you think Bruce considers those things? Surely he can guess the same things we have.”

“I think Bruce tries not to consider the Valeskas anymore than he absolutely has to. If you ask me, I think Joker is all that exists to him now.”

“Funny what Gotham does to people,” Dick remarks, and I know without creating even an abstract thought what he’s really saying. I make a noise of agreement, and let myself slip into sleep.


End file.
